rong.'

'Very likely indeed,' said Mabel, closing the subject. But Caffyn had
not spoken undesignedly, and had risked offending her for the moment
for the sake of producing the effect he wanted; and he was not
altogether unsuccessful. 'Was Harold right?' she thought later.
'Vincent is very quiet, but I always thought there was power of some
sort behind; and yet--would it not have shown itself before now? But
if poor Vincent _is_ only dull, it will make no difference to me; I
shall like him just as much.'

But, for all that, the suggestion very effectually prevented all
danger of Vincent's becoming idealised by distance into something more
interesting than a brother--which was, indeed, the reason why Caffyn
made it.

Vincent himself, meanwhile, unaware--as all of us would pray to be
kept unaware--of the portrait of himself, by a friend, which was being
exhibited to the girl he loved, was walking down Ladbroke Hill to
spend the remainder of his last evening in England in loneliness at
his rooms; for he had no heart for anything else.

It was dark by that time. Above him was a clear, steel-blue sky; in
front, across the hollow, rose Campden Hill, a dim, dark mass,
twinkling with lights. By the square at his side a German band was
playing the garden music from 'Faust,' with no more regard for
expression and tunefulness than a German band is ever capable of; but
distance softened the harshness and imperfection of their rendering,
and Siebel's air seemed to Vincent the expression of his own
passionate, unrequited devotion.

'I would do anything for her,' he said, half aloud, 'and yet I dared
not tell her then.... But if I ever come back to her again--before it
is too late--she shall know all she is and always will be to me. I
will wait and hope for that.'

CHAPTER IV.

MALAKOFF TERRACE.

After parting from Vincent at the end of Rotten Row, Mark Ashburn
continued his walk alone through Kensington High Street and onwards,
until he came to one of those quiet streets which serve as a sort of
backwater to the main stream of traffic, and, turning down this, it
was not long before he reached a row of small three-story houses, with
their lower parts cased in stucco, but the rest allowed to remain in
the original yellow-brown brick, which time had mellowed to a pleasant
warm tone. 'Malakoff Terrace,' as the place had been christened (and
the title was a tolerable index of its date), was rather less
depressing in ap